From behind him in the room Hans Castorp responded: “That would be rather early⁠—surely it can’t be settling down to winter already⁠—but it has a terribly final look. If winter consists in darkness and cold, snow and hot pipes, then there’s no denying it’s winter again. And when you think we’d just finished with it and that the snow only just melted⁠—at least, it seems that way, doesn’t it, as though spring were only just over⁠—well, it gives one a turn, I will say. It is actually a blow to one’s love of life⁠—let me explain to you how I mean. I mean the world as normally arranged is conducive to man’s needs and his pleasure in life⁠—isn’t that so? I won’t go so far as to say that the whole natural order of things, for instance the size of the earth, the time it takes to revolve on its axis and about the sun, the division between day and night, summer and winter⁠—in short, the whole cosmic rhythm, if you like to call it that⁠—was especially arranged for our use and behoof; that would be cheek, I suppose, and simple-minded into the bargain. It would be teleological reasoning, as the philosophers express it. No, it would be truer to say that our needs are⁠—thank God that it should be so⁠—in harmony with the larger, the fundamental facts of nature.